Fun week in progress

No real updates on my little Anastasia.  I have a feeling the punchline is coming soon, whether its involving me sending personal info or money.  We'll see.  Either way it was a fun diversion.

So this week, what do we have?  Ah yes, Saints Row 2.  I remember the original not holding much interest for me back when it was in development.  I recall seeing some screens from E3 05 or something and dismissing it out of hand.  Then a funny thing happened...the demo became available.  Within 5 minutes I was hooked, and when the game came out I found myself enjoying it more than I had even the GTA3 games.  It seemed to fix all the problems that plagued the GTA series (although it had a few of its own), but in fairness Volition did have the benefit of learning from Rockstar's mistakes.  Apparently this had been a game in development for the OldBox around the same time San Andreas was being developed, but it got pushed back to release on the 360.

So fast forward to this year, and like everyone else I was pumped for GTA4.  I even went to the midnight sale at my local Gamestop (wound up drawing #1 in line, woot me!) to get some early time in with it before work the next morning.  But as I popped in GTA4 and spent about an hour with it, I noticed something funny: I was bored.  I figured I was just tired and needed sleep, things would be better when I played it after work the next night.  But it didn't get better.  I read all these reviews insisting the controls were much improved.  They weren't.  Did it look nice?  Yep.  But I also noticed the game incorporated things from Saints Row, things that reviews decided to overlook like the GPS system.  Only thing was they weren't implemented as well as they were in Saints Row.

So after about 3 days and 12 hours play time, I had enough.  I was bored with GTA4.  I tried going on rampages, which is really the point of these games..right?  Being able to just go off was one of my great pleasures in all the GTA games, reckless destruction and mayhem never got boring.  Except in GTA4, for me it did.  Real fast.  Then I tried crossing a bridge to the other side of an island and was met with an army of police who wasted me for the heinous crime of...trying to get to an area I hadn't opened yet?  Bleh.  About a week later I went to a friend's place who had beaten the main story of the game.  He let me mess around with the game with everything unlocked.  Boring.  So about 3 weeks after it released, I traded in my copy at Gamestop.  Turns out I was far from the first person to do that there.  I was left with the distinct impression that Saints Row, the original, was an overall better product than GTA4. 

At one point, while I still had GTA4, I even popped in Saints Row to see if it was just me.  Maybe it was, maybe I was just in a rut where nothing would be fun, or maybe the genre didn't hold any appeal for me.  That wasn't the case, as I immediately got into the flow of things in SR and found myself having the good time GTA4 wasn't providing me with.

So now we have Saints Row 2, releasing today.  The reviews are all positive (no 10s though, sorry Volition...next time budget some money to spray adverts all over the gaming sites and mags) though it strikes me funny that the bigger sites, who are the ones giving out the "low" scores in the 8s, are taking a highbrow approach to the juvenile humor found in SR2 compared to the grandiosity that is GTA4.  Uh...its a sandbox videogame, Jeeves.  The more sophomoric and juvenile, the better.  Thats why we game, right?

Anyway, I've got half a vacation day scheduled (its 2am now) later in the day and will be home by 1pm with my copy in tow.  I am going to be one of the lameasses who makes his guy look like the Joker (because I can), and I'm holding out hope I can make my gang dress up like clowns.  If not, then ninjas will have to do!

So on the heels of that, coming this weekend, we have Max Payne hitting the theaters.  One of my all-time favorite games largely because of the narrative it combined with non-stop action, I am daring to hope that this will be a good movie.  Everything I've seen in the trailers and features leads me to believe that the director understood the source material.  Let's hope thats the case.  I remember the Silent Hill movie, when that was in production.  All this talk about Christopher Gans being a huge SH fan, about how he was making this movie with the stories in the game in mind, etc.  I was really excited...until I saw the movie poster.  At that point I realized someone, somewhere, got involved who had no idea what the SH franchise was about.  Turns out it was Gans himself, and while there were some fine set pieces and good moments, the movie was absolute crap.  I don't get that feeling with Max Payne.  Even the posters look like they "get it".  Lets keep our fingers crossed for this one, I'm taking the kid to see it this weekend.

I've been working on parts of some of the originals I've been learning in my band.  Playing root notes on bass to mirror the guitar has its place, but to me its boring if thats all you do.  I've been working on some parts of some of the songs, trying to add a little personality where I can.  I don't want to take attention away from the guitar bits (which are really good), but rather I want to compliment them with some nice work underneath.  It was during one of these moments that I actually came up with what I consider to be a really cool riff of my own.  I fiddled with it for awhile, and suddenly I had the framework for a song.  Its the first bit of music I've created in over 15 years and I was really excited about it.  I'm hoping the guys like it when I play it for them next time.

And...thats about it.  Work is still stressful.  I may have news on that long-awaited and seemingly mythical promotion I was promised an opportunity at 2 years ago, but that will have to wait 2 more weeks.  We will see.